Profile: Robert Faid

This article features a popular attempt to "name that beast." Throughout history we have had all sorts of persons designated the bearer of the conspicuous 666; it has ranged from Nero (my own view) to Hitler to Prince Charles, and here, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Robert Faid was a scientist -- a nuclear engineer, specifically. I have used the past tense for him as it seems (per the ever-reliable Wikipedia) that he died just this past year (2008). He also authored other books of a seemingly apologetic nature that apparently argued for Christianity based on scientific principles, but our report here will be on an item titled Gorbachev! Has the Real Antichrist Come? that was issued in that fateful year of 1988 which also spawned other end times failures.

I remember this book very well from its day, and was surprised to find on reading it again just how little of it is consumed with actual argument for Faid's identification of Gorbachev as Antichrist. Indeed, only the first chapter lays out the case for this; the remainder -- the bulk of the book -- consists of Faid's predictions based on this identification, combined with midrashic readings of Biblical texts. Many of the predictions Faid offered were terrifying, with pictures of Christian children starving because their parents would not take the Mark of the Beast; the vision was especially grim from Faid as an adherent to a "post-Tribulation" Rapture thesis.

As is my normal practice, I'll divide my commentary into thematic sections which illustrate Faid's methodology (and mistakes).

The Case for Gorbachev. By what means did Faid identify Gorbachev with the Antichrist? His case involved sixteen clues which devolved to two categories of arguments:

  1. Midrashic readings of Biblical texts. Faid attempts to pair Gorbachev with descriptions of the Antichrist derived from Revelation. For example:
    • Rev. 13:1 speaks of the beast "rising out of the sea." Faid legitimately reads the sea in terms of humanity, but arrives at Gorbachev by saying that like the beast, he "burst upon the world scene in the same way as John's beast arose from the sea." [15] This is something of a vague description; Gorbachev's biography (see here) reveals a slow and steady rise through the ranks, of the sort that might as well reflect that of any American Presidential figure as well. In short, Faid's application is so vague that it is not unique enough to be meaningful -- and there's not much reason to say that "Satan was responsible" [25] for Gorbachev's gradual rise to power.
    • Faid gives Gorbachev the likeness of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion (Rev. 13) based, respectively, on the "cunning and cruelty" of Soviet ideology, the Russian use of a bear as a symbol, and that when a Soviet leader talks, people pay attention as they would to a roaring lion. [26] These are again rather too vague; over time, the three beasts here have also variously been read in terms of, for example, Britain's symbolism with the lion, Germany with the leopard (because of its rise from a group of smaller nations), and Russia as the bear. It is simply not hard to find associative characteristics with these animals -- especially if we expand our range of possible applications to the entire world, named persons, and social organizations. (This speaks well, incidentally, for limiting the applications to a specific time period, as is required by my own preterist views...but I'll keep that for another time!)
  2. Numeric equivalencies. Faid employs the standard practice of computing Gorbachev's name with letter-number equivalencies. There is a tad of fudging involved in doing so, however.
    • He decides not to use all of Gorbachev's name; he only uses first name, middle initial, and last name when making his computations. Obviously, this permitted a certain degree of flexibility in what he could calculate.
    • He employs principles from a system called theomatics which sought similar numeric values throughout the NT text. It is not our place here to fully evaluate that system (pubished some time ago in a 1977 book, and still promoted today), but it can be seen that theomatics helps increase its odds for success by use of a "clustering" concept -- essentially, a phrase need not have the exact numeric value you are looking for; it can miss by one or two, and still be in a "cluster," or perhaps it can be a multiple of the number you want, or within a "cluster" for that.

      So, for example, Faid calculates Gorbachev's name in Russian to be numerically 666 x 2 -- though off by three.

    Perhaps it may be argued that this isn't too bad; it's still very close, isn't it? I'd like to say so, but I have not been able to verify Faid's attempts [7] to establish numeric values for the Russian alphabet. Indeed, the one source I could find for it (now defunct) substantially disagreed with several of his assigned values for letters used in Gorbachev's name. Since Faid does not cite a source for the numeric values he assigned, it is difficult to assess his accuracy on this point.

  3. Faid also attempted numeric equivalences to Gorbachev's name in Hebrew and Greek. For Hebrew, he admits that an expert in Hebrew found "a number of equally correct transliterations" of Gorbachev's name (how many is not said), but he found one, apparently, that came out to a value of 666 x 2. How many other transliterations were rejected would seem to be important, but we are not told how many there were.

    In Greek, Faid had an expert in Greek transliterate Gorbachev's name for him and reached a multiple of 888 (which is also the numeric value of the name "Jesus"), with a deviation of one (1777 = 888 x 2, +1). The values do add up, but there seems to be some fudging; there's no equivalent to "v" in ancient Greek, so a "b" was used at the end, and there are two letters that seem to not make sense, so that Gorbachev's last name would seem to be "Gormbachob".

  4. The reader may say at this point, "Well, this is still pretty amazing, isn't it?" Perhaps, but not for an equation of Gorbachev with the antichrist. Let us put it this way: Revelation says that the number of the beast is 666 -- not, "a multiple of 666, with a deviation of 2 or 3." If John had meant that the beast's number was 1329 (666 x 2, minus 3) then there is no reason why he should not have said 1329 was the beast's number. Faid's application of the theomatic principles ignores this plain fact.

    Related to matching Gorbachev with the "sea" prophecy of Rev. 13:1, Faid noted that the numeric value of "Satan" was 276, and that at the time Gorbachev was put into power, the population of the Soviet Union was "276 million." Was it? Maybe....for a few seconds. I have found estimates of the population of the Soviet Union for that year ranging from 272 million to 280 million.

A Cracked Crystal Ball. As persuasive as Faid's case for Gorbachev may have seemed in 1988, it may well have been added to by the dire predictions he made for how the rest of Revelation would be fulfilled in the months to come. As is often the case, hindsight makes the wisdom of the author seem less stellar than it was when the threat was originally hanging. Among the events predicted by Faid within the next few years:

Needless to say, Faid's skills at prognostication would not have set him in good stead under the Deuteronomic prophet test.

Miscellaneous:

Faid's prognostication record seems to have been somewhat unsuccessful, to say the least. Is there any hope for it? Not much. Gorbachev is still alive as of this writing (in 2009), and as reported here, the 77-year old former leader of the Soviet Union is looking to re-enter Russian politics in 2011. Could Gorbachev be distributing the mark as part of a program for the entire world by his mid-80s? Will he overcome Vladimir Putin's 88 percent approval rating, and his own status as a "widely reviled" person, to once again assume control?

Somehow, I doubt it -- more so in 2020 as I reviewed this article again.

But at least we can say this for Faid: He didn't take Gorbachev's noticeable birthmark as evidence that he bore "the mark of the beast."